250 MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 



species are endowed with vigorous powers, which take a 

 pleasure in meeting and overcoming difficulty and danger. 

 Even that principle on which our faculties are constituted a 

 wide range of freedom in which to act for all various occa- 

 sions necessitates a resentful- faculty, by which individuals 

 may protect themselves from the undue and capricious exer- 

 cise of each other's faculties, and thus preserve their individual 

 rights. So also there is cautiousness, to give us a tendency 

 to provide against the evils by which we may be assailed ; 

 and secretiveness, to enable us to conceal whatever, being 

 divulged, would be offensive to others or injurious to our- 

 selves, a function which obviously has a certain legitimate 

 range of action, however liable to be abused. The constitu- 

 tion of the mind generally points to a state of intimate relation 

 of individuals towards society, towards the external world, and 

 towards things above this world. No individual being is 

 integral or independent ; he is only part of an extensive piece 

 of social mechanism. The inferior mind, full of rude energy 

 and unregulated impulse, does not more require a superior 

 nature to act as its master and its mentor, than does the superior 

 nature require to be surrounded by such rough elements on 

 which to exercise its high endowments as a ruling and tutelary 

 power. This relation of each to each produces a vast portion 

 of the active business of life. It is easy to see that, if we 

 were all alike in our moral tendencies, and all placed on a 

 medium of perfect moderation in this respect, the world would 

 be a scene of everlasting dulness and apathy. It requires 

 the variety of individual constitution to give moral life to the 

 scene. 



The indefiniteness of the potentiality of the human faculties, 

 and the complexity which thus attends their relations, lead 

 unavoidably to occasional error. If we consider for a moment 

 that there are not less than thirty such faculties, that they 

 are each given in different proportions to different persons, 

 that each is at the same time endowed with a wide discretion 

 as to the force and frequency of its action, and that our 

 neighbours, the world, and our connexions with something 

 beyond it, are all exercising an ever-varying influence over 



